THE WASTE OF CHILD LIFE

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume LXXXI, Issue 18787, 22 May 1923, Page 4

THE WASTE OF CHILD LIFE

In the United States, out of every 1000 children born 87 die soon after birth, and the American Press is much exercised over the tragedy. A correspondent whose letter appears in another column has forwarded us an extract from the current issue of Life, in which that journal traverses the elaborate report recently issued by the Children’s Bureau of Washington. That report shows the infant death rate of every country, and the great point of interest so far as we are concerned is that it seems to prove that the child death rate in New Zealand is lighter than in any other country. A tribute New Zealanders may well be proud of is paid in the words: That far-ilung group of islands in the Pacific, with their population of a little over 1,0U0,000 has somehow learned the secret of keeping its babies alive, and thus has solved, for the benefit of the race, one of the greatest problems of modern life. The figures published by the Children’s Bureau of Washington show that the general infant death rate of the world—the .army of tiny babies who die almost as soon as they begin Ito live—is greater than the death rate of the Great War. All the devilish instruments of slaughter invented and used in that war—shrapnel, aeroplanes, poison gases, 10-in. and 20-in. guns, etc., etc.—were less destructive of human life than ignorance and carelessness are of tiny child life in sheltered homes. Chili has a black prominence in the death rate of its children. About every third baby born under its skies dies during its first twelve months. Mediterranean Europe has a bad record in this matter. Germany, where the art of household life is supposed to have reached its highest point, has a bad record, the death rate of its infants being 145 out of every 1000, and, measured by the New Zealand death rate, this means that every tenth baby born in Germany needlessly dies in the first year of its existence. Tho death rate of little children in Scotland is 102 per 1000, and this means that 1?7 little Scotch babies out of every 1000 born died in their first year when they might have lived. In England 89 babies out of every 1000 die m their first year, and a comparison with the figures of New Zealand proves that 45 out of the 89 need not have died. Australia comes off well in this comparison. Only 69 out' of its 3000 babies die, but this is 24 more than die in New Zealand.